News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Seligmann (1930-1998) is arguably Central New York’s best
known modern architect. As a practicing architect, influential
teacher and a Dean of Syracuse University’s School of Architecture,
he put his stamp on New York State design, and shaped the
architectural aesthetic of several generations of architectural
students and professionals.

Born in Osnabrück, Germany, Seligmann spent the
latter part of World War II in a concentration camp; unfortunately
his mother and sister did not survive the camps. After the war he was
sent to the US to live with relatives in Groton New York, beginning
his long association with Central New York. I wrote about the
Cortland synagogue in my book American Synagogues: A Century of
Architecture and Jewish Community (New York: Rizzoli, 2003). The following text is adapted from that book:

Seligmann created several synagogue designs in the 1960s that were
custom-made for the unique characteristics of the congregations they
served. In Binghamton, New York, he built the Orthodox Beth David
synagogue, a thoroughly modern structure that combined traditional
arrangements, such as the placing the 400-seat sanctuary on a second
floor, and the inclusion of a small courtyard, with the use of raw
inexpensive materials such as exposed block and concrete for
expressive purpose. The plan is remarkable in that it created a substrata of functional
spaces which serve as a foundation for the much smaller upper-level
prayer hall, as well as an open area for communal gathering. The
result, in miniature scale is like the artificial Mount in Jerusalem
upon which perched the Temple. The rationale for this arrangement is
the same Talmudic passage cited in reference to Congregation Sons of
Israel.

Nearby, in the town of Cortland where he lived, (about a half
hour south of Syracuse, and a half hour east of Ithaca), Seligmann
received another commission for the even smaller Temple Brith Shalom,
a nominally Conservative synagogue dedicated in 1969. Like Beth
David, the project is a modest urban building on a small lot that is
built to maintain local scale. The building is very private, however,
and mostly looks in upon itself, in the manner of many small town
European synagogues, especially those from Seligmann’s native
Germany. The entrance to the low brick complex is off a parking lot
set back from the street. Though the synagogue takes a defensive
posture, the publicly presented corner offers a tantalizing mix of
shapes and lines. Like the Binghamton synagogue, there is a small
courtyard that creates a transitional mood.

The Cortland congregation, which consists of between thirty and
forty families, is non-hierarchic and for most of its existence it
has not had a permanent rabbi or cantor. The building reflects this –
inside, all the space are united, though sliding panels can
subdivided the space to isolate the small sanctuary. This space has a
special purity. At first it appears simply boxlike, but shifts of
floor level, lighting and symmetry subtly charge the space with quiet
energy. The low ceiling of the central all-purpose hall through which
one must pass, creates a pressure that gives way in the sanctuary,
where the floor slopes away and the ceiling rises.

The contemporary theatrics of Yamasaki (Glencoe, Bloomfield Hills)
or Abramowitz (Buffalo) are nowhere to be seen. Instead, an upward
sloping ceiling with a skylight and the nearly square white ark wall
that seems to float on a frame of light, are enough. The sanctuary
has only six rows of pews, but it can be extended into the social
area from which one looks out through a glass wall to a sheltered
garden .

This project was one that Werner Seligmann remained attached
throughout his life. His wife’s family had been among the founders
of the original Cortland community, and he lived in Cortland for over
thirty years. At Brith Shalom, Seligmann created a little known, but
emblematic, statement of the balance between religion and community,
modernism and tradition. Significantly, it is this same symbiosis
that would dominate synagogue design at the end of the century, when
many of the grand architectural statement of the post-war generation
will seem obsolete.

On the Binghamton synagogue see also: “Synagogue
Design: Forging an Aesthetic unbound by tradition,” in Progressive
Architecture (March 1966), 146-150.

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This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.